developing a...to build a system of meetings and retreats, and kinda get-togethers with the right...
TRANSCRIPT
Hey, it's Michael and I want to welcome
you to this month's Master Class. Today,
we were gonna be talking about a
meeting rhythm that will work in your
church, that will take you from the big
picture of annual planning all the way
down through what you should talk about
each and every week. So thanks for
watching and let's dive into this month's
Master Class.
Well, welcome to this Master Class today. I
wanna talk and share just kind of a mix
really of what this is gonna be is things
that I've learned and used in ministry. But
also kind put it in the church context for
you and your staff in your leadership
team meetings. And I wanna talk about
how to develop a really healthy meeting
rhythm. And the reason this topic is so
important is because I have spent, you
know… I'm 44 years old right now. So I'm
not, you know, young, I'm not old. I'm in the
middle, right? I'm the very definition of the
middle age now, but I've been in ministry
for more than 20 years, both as a youth
pastor then as a church planner, a pastor,
and now, working with churches all around
the country.
And I have had my fair share of meetings,
right? We probably all have. We sat in
meetings as participants, we sat in
meetings as leaders, we sat in meetings
that we wanted to be in, we sat in
meetings that we didn't wanna be in. And
observationally speaking, and I've heard
this from other pastors and leaders
probably like you, is that there is this
tension because so many meetings just
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Developing a Healthy Meeting Rhythm
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are not very productive, right? Some
people love meetings, some people hate
meetings, but I think more people would
agree that meetings could be more
productive. And the reason I think this is is
because so much of the time that we get
together in our meetings is that we're
dealing with urgent stuff, right? We need
to have a meeting because this happened
Sunday or we need to have a meeting
because this is happening Sunday and
we're not ready for it.
And so, our meetings tend to be focused
on what's going on right now and what's
urgent, and fixing a crisis or an
opportunity that's like in three days and
we got to get ready for it. And most of our
meetings are about the here and now.
Very few of our meetings ever kinda get
to what I would consider core or the heart
or the big picture or what I would say
would be the ultimately important stuff. So
we get together and we solve little
problems for right now, but we actually
never really have a structure, a system
where we can get together and solve the
big problems or prevent the right now
problems from happening because we're
looking at the whole thing. And so most
church staff meetings, team meetings,
outdoors meetings, whatever kind of
meetings happen, they deal with the here
and now, and they don't ever really get to
the heart of the matter.
Now, I live this, right? I had this happen
both as a meeting participant, I've lead
meetings that weren't very productive, but
it's several years ago, I kind of stumbled
into two or three couple of different
sources, a rhythm that really pulled me
out of this. They got me kinda out of like,
"Let's solve today's problem," but to look
at what are we trying to accomplish, and
to build a system of meetings and
retreats, and kinda get-togethers with the
right people in the room that actually
focused on the whole organization and
not just this week's problems. And that's
what I wanna share with you today.
I wanna share with you, I just call this a
meeting rhythm and the reason it's a
rhythm is because it happens with
consistency, and it starts with a year
planning, a year in advance, and drills all
the way down through the week. And
what this rhythm does... And you can
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customize it, you can change it, you can
tweak it, but what it does is it gives you a
place where you know you're going to talk
about the important stuff. It gives you a
place where you know you have time on
the calendar with the right people in the
room to talk about the big picture. You
can still talk about this week, you could
still talk about the emergency stuff, but
you're gonna find, if you implement a
rhythm like this, that some of that stuff
goes into the background and you
actually talk about bigger stuff and more
important stuff.
And so, the key to this whole rhythm, it
starts with planning a year in advance.
Okay. It starts with creating a year in
advance and then it continues with
intentional mile markers throughout the
year where you revisit the plan that you
create. So there's four steps and I just
wanna walk you quickly through the four
steps. I've got templates, documents, and
resource to help you do it, and learn it,
and implement it, but here's how it works.
Okay. Step number one is you start with
an annual retreat, an annual retreat. Now,
as I'm recording this video right now, our
Church Fuel team, leadership team, just
came off of our annual retreat. So we do
what we're teaching you. Okay. We do this
in our organization. And last week, again,
as I'm recording this, last week or two
weeks ago, I was with the church on the
ground and they were doing this annual
retreat. They had me come in as a
consultant/adviser kind of coach to guide
them through it and they did this. So we
do this in our church, we help churches do
this personally, and I'm just gonna kinda
tell you how it works, and you could do it
on your own.
So you start with an annual retreat and at
the annual retreat, I recommend two to
three days, okay, two to three days out of
the office, maybe even out of town if you
can afford it or get to it, two to three days.
And here's what you do, you do two
things, two things, that's it. Just two things
at this annual retreat. First of all is you
build your one-page ministry plan, you
build your one-page ministry plan, and
you do it in the room. You have lots of
conversation, you have lots of debates,
you have lots of arguments, and you have
alignment that comes out of it, you build
your one-page ministry plan.
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Now, your one-page ministry plan... We've
got training just on that so you can drill
back, get you going just to watch that
training, but on your one-page ministry
plan you've answered eight things. And
you put eight things on the one sheet of
paper. And that's what you do. You take
an entire day, you take an entire day and
a half to either create or revisit the eight
things that are on your one-page ministry
plan. And you walk out of that retreat with
a sheet of paper filled out with a pen, old
school, and you say, "This is what we're
doing next year. This is what we're doing in
the next 12 months. This is our plan for the
next year." It's all one page, is a one-page
ministry plan for the next year, and that's
what you create at your annual planning
retreat.
Now, the second thing that you create at
this annual thing is your calendar. So you
do your plan and you do your calendar.
You go, "When are we talking about this?
When are we talking about volunteers?
When are we talking about giving? What
are our big events?" And you put it on the
calendar. And you do this with the
leadership team, and you do this at a
annual thing so you can look at the whole
year. Not what are we doing next week,
not what do we need to announce on
Sunday. I mean, the year, and you make
sure that you don't have too much stuff
crammed into January or May or
September or December. You make sure
that your key ministries, which you talk
about on your one-page plan, actually
show up in your calendar. You make sure
that too much stuff that's not on your
one-page plan doesn't show up in your
calendar.
So at your annual plan, you get your key
leaders together, two to three days, you
create your one-page plan, and you
create your annual calendar. Now, if you
only do that, you will have incredible
clarity about the next year. And here's the
deal, the first time you do it, it may be
difficult. The first time you do it, you may
be like, "I'm not sure if we did that right."
That's okay. The reason this is a rhythm is
you're gonna come back to it next year.
Now, I really recommend that you do this
in like a November, December or January
type of setting, right? Either the end of the
year looking ahead or the beginning of
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the year looking ahead. You can do it any
time throughout the year, but I think it
works if can you get it on the rhythm of
having that happen at the end of one
year leading into the next. Maybe that's a
calendar year, it could be the ministry
year, however you look at it. But put it
down on the calendar and do it every
single year.
And every time you do your annual
retreat, you know what you're doing,
you're doing your one-page plan, and
you're doing your one-page calendar.
That's what you do. Now, can you do
leadership development? Sure. Can you
do team building? Sure. Can you have fun
and bring spouses? Sure. You can add
other stuff, but make sure you at least do
those two things, two to three days, out of
the office, prefer out of the city if you can
do it, one-page plan, one-page calendar.
Okay. That's your annual retreat.
Now, a lot of churches have done this, at
some point in time. Typically, what
happens next is you get the one-page
plan, you get the calendar, and you come
back, and you set it on your desk
somewhere. And then your Bible goes on
top of that and then some notes from a
meeting on top of that, and then some
other papers go on top of that or it goes
in a computer somewhere, right? It goes in
a Dropbox folder, it goes in Google Doc,
and you share it. And as time goes by it
gets further down, it's not a recently
opened document, it's way down on the
list. We create our plan and then we just
kind of ignore it. That doesn't work and I
think you know that doesn't work, and
that's the tension that we feel is because,
"Okay. I can create this plan," but we don't
execute the plan.
Here's the key. Okay. Once you create
your annual plan, you're not done with
annual planning. The next key to that... So
number one is annual planning, annual
retreat. Number two, we call it quarterly
focus. So you go from annual plan, annual
retreat, to a quarterly focus. And here's
what you do. The next three quarters of
the year, right? So you're gonna have
three more quarters of the year, the next
three quarters, you get together for one
to two days. Now, you don't have to go
out of town for this, you could do in town.
But I still recommend you go out of the
office. Okay. It could be one day, it could
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be a day and a half, it could be a day plus
dinner, you can tweak the schedule, but
one to two days out of the office.
And what you do at the quarterly meeting
is you pull out the one place plan and you
say, "All right. This is what we're gonna do
this year. What do we need to do this
quarter to make it happen?" Right? You
break it down, you make it bite-size. A
book I wanna recommend to you that you
at least look at and I'll give you some
notes on it too is called "The 12 Week
Year." I read this book and a big take away
for me was because…a lot of times annual
plans and annual goals are too big.
And so, tell me if you've done this, right?
You're like, "Hey, this year, I'm gonna save
like $50,000." And then you don't save any
money until you get to November and
then you're like, "Well, now, how am I
gonna say $50,000 in two months?"
Right? The plan was too big. It’s like, "I'm
gonna run a marathon and I'm gonna do
it in December." And then we do nothing,
nothing, nothing, nothing, because here's
the deal, and the author of this book,
Brian Moran says that, he said, "When we
set 12-month goals, like December seems
like forever away in January." So he
advocates, he says, "Hey, forget the
annual goals," which I don't agree with
that, but he says, "What if you shrink it
down to 12 weeks, to a quarter?" Because
12 weeks, if you're gonna accomplish a 12-
week goal, you gotta get to work on that
today.
So, what you do in your quarterly focus is
you pull out the annual plan and then you
say, "All right. What are we doing this
quarter to make it happen?" And two
things I recommend that you do here,
what are your quarterly goals, so you take
your annual plan which has goals on it
and you say, "Well, what do we need to do
this quarter to make that happen?" And
so, it's smaller, it's bite size, it's doable, it's
accomplishable. And then we talk in
Church Fuel, we use the term rocks like,
"What are the big projects? What are the
big rocks that we need to do and work on
this quarter?" Not all year, it's this quarter,
we gotta check them off.
And what does it look like to be checked
off, right? So if we say, “Well, we're gonna
improve something.” Well, what does
checking that off look like. We have to
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agree on how we're measuring that and
we do that at the quarter. So every
quarter you get together and you say, "All
right, we got a plan. What do we do in this
quarter to make it happen?" Same people,
same people, "What do we do in this
quarter?"
Now, annual, that's number one. So annual
retreat. Number two, quarterly focus.
Number three, monthly review, monthly
review. Now, your monthly review, it can be
in the office, it can be a half a day to a
day, right. So there's no overnight involved.
It's a shorter meeting. We have churches
that do this in a few hours, we have
churches that it will take a whole day. You
can go off site if you wanna borrow a
different church or accomplish it
somewhere else just for fun. But this is
where you look at your quarterly
progress. Right? So you're drilling it down.
You're drilling all the important stuff down
and you're saying, "Hey, this is what we are
supposed to do this quarter. These are
our rocks, these are our goals. How are
we doing? Where are we stuck? Are we on
track, are we off track? What issues do we
have this quarter that we can fully solve,
this quarter not like in the future, but this
quarter? What do we need to talk
through? What issues do we have?"
This is a great place to do development as
well, leadership development like, how do
we need to get better as leaders in order
to accomplish our goals. And so now, think
about this, you've drilled down to a month.
No, it's not an annual plan, it's not a big
picture plan anymore. It's like, this month,
this is what we're doing to make this
quarter happen. And if we do that this
quarter, then the year will happen, right?
So we're building.
And then the last thing is the weekly
check-in. The weekly check-in probably
looks like most church staff meetings, and
this is when you can talk about the little
issues that come up. Because you now
have the bigger picture in place, you now
have the important stuff in place, so you
can get together over the week, in the
week and just hit some things. So a few
things that I recommend you do weekly,
weekly. Okay? Start with stories. Always
start with stories.
When we have our Church Fuel meeting,
the very first thing on every agenda, every
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time, is somebody tell me a good story.
And it's not like once upon a time story it's,
"Hey, I got an e-mail from a customer who
was stuck and we're helping them, then
we point them this, and they said thanks."
In your church it could be like, "Hey, there
was a guest this past Sunday, they came
with Martha and they sat together on the
second row and it was awesome." It could
be a baptism, it could be something
happening in your children's ministry,
family ministry. It could be something that
your church did.
Start with a story. Just take five minutes
and start every single weekly check-in
with a story, and then review the numbers.
We're gonna come back and do a whole
another video on this because I really
believe that everybody in your church
needs to know some key numbers. And
just make it public, make it public
knowledge amongst your leaders to say,
"This is how many people are here. This is
how, you know, these are some key
numbers that you should know." We'll talk
through that later, but always review the
numbers. You don't have to talk about
them incessantly, but review them so that
everybody knows what's going on.
You can use the Train Your Team resource
that we talked about, use Train Your Team
in your weekly meeting. If you have a
weekly meeting, take the first 15 or 20
minutes and do some skill-based
leadership development, and then
communicate your key information, right?
And so here's the secret with the weekly
meeting, the agenda is the same every
single week. With the monthly meeting, it's
the same every single month. With the
quarterly meeting, we're talking about the
same things every month. Now the stuff
on the things change, but the format, the
flow, the way it works stays the same.
So here's the deal, the bigger one always
cancels out the smaller one. So when you
do your annual retreat, that takes the
place of the quarterly that quarter. When
you do your quarterly, it kicks out the
monthly that month. When you do your
monthly, you don't need to have your
weekly. And so, the bigger one always
kicks out the smaller one. And that keeps
it from just being overly meeting all the
time. But here's why this works, here's why
this works is because now your core
meetings are focused on the big
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important, what does God want to do
through our church. Not your meetings
are always like, "Which song are we gonna
sing?" or "This person..."
You know, it's bigger, your meetings are
bigger. They're more important, they're
more impactful, and all the little ones
serve the bigger one, all the quarterlies
serve your annual, all the monthlies serve
your quarter. Right? All your weekly, help
your... It builds, it builds, and it builds a
rhythm. And as you do it over and over,
and over again, if you do this for a year or
a couple years or three years, you will find
that you get better, you will find that they
become much more effective, and that
you're better able to lead the church that
God's called you to lead.
Now, I gave you a bunch of resources this
month, and you can see them here on the
page. I gave you that one-page ministry
plan, that's what you do in your annual
retreat. You've got that, if you didn't have
it already. I gave you a quarterly focus
meeting agenda, right? So when you do
these quarterlies, here's what it could look
like. You've got a monthly review agenda.
I've given you a weekly agenda, and I'm
giving you a report template that you can
use. So there's a bunch of documents and
you've got the PDFs, you've got the
originals. If you want to change them up,
you can do that. But you have these
documents to implement the system.
I also recommended some other
resources, link to some other videos, if you
wanna drill in on any of these things. All
this information is available to you this
month through the Master Class right here
on the page. But if you have any questions
about it, if you wanna bring in a facilitator,
we can point you in the right direction
with some people who can help you,
particularly with the annual retreat. If you
want some help, get some help on this,
because as you implement this rhythm, it
will really, really, really help your church in
a big and significant way. So if you got
any questions, let us know. We're here to
serve you. Thanks for watching and God
bless.
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